Public Speaking Training: Create Compelling Speeches & Presentations

Public Speaking & Presentation Skills Course Outline

• Creating Compelling Speeches

  Employing a proven five-step method

  • Hooking the audience
  • Identifying the critical need
  • Presenting the key ideas concisely
  • Explaining the payoff
  • Calling for action

  Identifying your goal

  • Informing
  • Persuading
  • Motivating
  • Entertaining

  The skill-building cycle

  • Determining your baseline public speaking skills
  • Taming fears and increasing confidence through practice and preparation
  • Leveraging your own personality and style
  • Increasing your awareness and abilities by evaluating other speakers
  • Integrating audience feedback to fine-tune your delivery

• Building an Effective Presentation

  The construction and design process

  • Setting objectives
  • Assessing and addressing the needs of your audience
  • Matching purpose and point to the audience
  • Creating the storyboard model

  Mind mapping as a presentation design tool

  • Rapidly capturing presentation ideas
  • Structuring content for clarity
  • Converting mind maps into presentations

  Shaping the presentation

  • Applying learning theory for optimal information transfer
  • Employing 7+/-2 rule to aid comprehension
  • Volume vs. retention
  • Identifying the key points

  Designing high-impact slides

  • Making text, color and graphics work together
  • Limiting content to increase effect
  • Employing information graphics to simplify complex data
  • Avoiding visual traps

• Engaging Your Audience

  The speaker as a visual aid

  • Directing the audience's natural eye movement
  • Moving dynamically within the presentation space
  • Engaging the entire audience with effective eye contact
  • Synchronizing gestures to the verbal message

  Animating your speech with vocal variety

  • Adding pitch modulation and dynamics
  • Reinforcing points with pauses and silence
  • Reducing verbal distractors

  Delivering memorable openings and closings

  • Five opening strategies to spark interest
  • Motivating the audience with a call to action

• Adding Interactivity to Your Presentations

  Drawing the audience

  • Stimulating participation with preplanned questions
  • Conveying content through topical questions
  • When to ask rhetorical, group or targeted questions

  Handling questions from the audience

  • Reward, restate and respond
  • Keeping your answers short and simple
  • Getting back on track after an unplanned interruption

  Managing the post-talk Q&A session

  • Pre-empting "hot-button" questions
  • Staying aware of the message you are conveying
  • Priming the pump when there are no questions

• Rehearsing and Delivering Your Speech

  Building confidence with practice

  • Effective rehearsal techniques
  • Incorporating audience feedback to improve a presentation
  • Staying within your time limit

  Delivering your presentation

  • Opening dynamically to create a winning first impression
  • Applying your public speaking toolkit